Sunday, August 3, 2008

YourBlackLife: Toby Keith Praises Lynching On Colbert Report?

Despite his background as a comedian, Stephen Colbert is known by many of the authors who have appeared on his show as one of the toughest interviewers in the business. But on July 28, when country music superstar Toby Keith stepped on the set of the Colbert Report to promote his movie, Beer For My Horses, he was greeted by his host with nothing less than reverential admiration. After a jovial, back-slapping sit-down with Keith, Colbert turned the stage over to his guest for a performance of the song that inspired the title and theme of his forthcoming "Southern comedy."

While Keith belted out "Beer For My Horses," Colbert's studio audience clapped to the beat, blithely unaware that they were swaying to a racially tinged, explicitly pro-lynching anthem that calls for the vigilante-style hanging of car thieves, "gangsters doing dirty deeds...crime in the streets," and other assorted evildoers.

Well a man come on the 6 o'clock newssaid somebody's been shotsomebody's been abusedsomebody blew up a buildingsomebody stole a carsomebody got awaysomebody didn't get to far yeahthey didn't get too far

Grandpappy told my pappy back in my day, sonA man had to answer for the wicked that he'd doneTake all the rope in TexasFind a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boysHang them high in the streetFor all the people to see

That Justice is the one thing you should always findYou got to saddle up your boysYou got to draw a hard lineWhen the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tuneAnd we'll all meet back at the local saloonAnd we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces singingwhiskey for my men, beer for my horses

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deedstoo much corruption and crime in the streetsIt's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the groundSend 'em all to their maker and he'll settle 'em downYou can bet he'll set 'em down...

During the days when Toby Keith's "Grandpappy" stalked the Jim Crow South, lynching was an institutional method of terror employed against blacks to maintain white supremacy. According to the Tuskegee Institute, between the years 1882 and 1951, 3,437 African-Americans were lynched in the United States, mostly in the heart of Dixie. Felonious assault and rape (read: corrupting "the flower of white womanhood") were the two most frequent justifications for lynch mob actions.